More apple recipes! 🙂 Yes, ’tis the season and seeing I love baking with apples so much, I thought that I would make this tart. Also, my dad will be here this evening, and he loves these French custard-style pies / tarts a lot. I browned the butter for the custard first, which gives it a lovely nutty flavor. Yum!
What makes you think of Middle Eastern food? For some reason (maybe not even close to being based in reality), plums, cardamom and pistachios all make me think of Middle Eastern cuisine. And I’ve been doing so much reading on Syria and Turkey and such that apparently I have those flavors on the mind. Clearly shortbread isn’t Middle Eastern though! These came out well though; a great combination.
There must be a dozen blueberry pie recipes on this here site. Overall, I am guessing there must be at least 50 blueberry recipes in general, but given how much I love them, this isn’t a surprise. Each time I make a new pie, I do a little bit of a twist, whether it be “warm spices” (cinnamon, clove), or with a crumble top, etc. This time I went for a bit of a tart twist, with buttermilk, lemon and ginger. Quite lovely and fresh.
As promised, there is more pie. 🙂 Last week, I made a blueberry pie with this flower like pattern, made with a small, circular cookie cutter. I’d never tried that before, but loved the way that it turned out, so I made another pie this week along the same lines. The filling also involved blueberries, but also plums and blackberries — very late summer-ish. Note the little heart with wings in the middle … it’s all in the details, eh?
October 19, 1999 is a date that will forever remain in my memory. Why, you say? What is so important about that very day? It is the day that I ate the most perfect Caesar Salad salad ever made in the history of Caesar salads.
Yes, I remember the date. I remember the place (it was a restaurant attached to a Holiday Inn between Sausalito and Mill Valley, CA) and I remember the salad as if I ate it yesterday and yet it is almost 17 years later. That is how good this salad was. Think that I am crazy now? Yes, I remember the date of a salad. 🙂 Ever since then, I have tried Caesar Salads often, in the hope that maybe, just maybe I could find one just as good. Either the dressing doesn’t taste quite right, or there is too much of it (nothing like dressing with a side of romaine [shudder]) or (more often than not) it is just bad.
This salad doesn’t come close to the 1999 Salad, but I have found this dressing to be pretty awesome. As you know, the base of Caesar salad is egg yolks, but dealing with raw egg yolks can be a little problematic at times, so I thought of what else I could use as a base and came up with mayonnaise, which is in essence … eggs! This dressing should stay fridge-stable for a couple of days, if you don’t end up using it all at once.